Image via Complex Original
Written by Jian DeLeon (@jiandeleon)
Social media is great. It allows people, especially bloggers, to connect with their audience in new ways, establish their personal brand a bit more, and share more of their taste with the Internet at large. Social networks like Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr are especially popular with the menswear set, given their propensity for joking around and taking photos of really nice, expensive clothing.
But #menswear isn't all sprezzatura and pants with no break. Indeed, social media can blow up in many a blogger's face if they come off as especially corny. With New York Fashion Week starting today, don't become the butt of the joke and pick up some good rules of thumb for navigating the massive world of social networking. These are The 10 Corniest Things Menswear Bloggers Do On Social Media.
10. "Good morning" tweets
Remember the days before twitter, when you would walk outside of the house, and scream "good morning!" to everyone you passed by on the street? No, you don't? Oh right, because only crazy people do that. Cool, you're just getting your day started. But like… it's already after noon. And if you're the type of person that says "Rise and Grind" chances are that you are totally horrible.
9. Follow Friday
Your friends might be aching for those struggle follows, but in general Follow Friday has been more about quantity than quality. How about instead, you just single out a twitter account you think people should follow based on the quality of their content? Maybe they're hilarious. Maybe they always tweet where the dope sales are at. Sharing that sort of thing with your followers is a hundred times more useful than a stream of usernames.
8. Instagram every single meal
You're abroad for Pitti Uomo and Brunello Cucinelli is literally carving a pig in front of you with diamond-encrusted cutlery. Holy crap, that sounds awesome. You're at home eating "night cheese" watching reruns of "Law & Order." Yikes. Keep that to yourself. Besides, people are probably following you to see cool clothes and occasional shots of your outfit, not to see how many bacon strips you consume in one week or live vicariously through your steady diet of press dinners and hors d'oeuvres consumed at fashion presentations.
7. Blast the same content on all platforms
It's good to use social media to help drive traffic to your site… but it's dumb to take a screenshot of a tweet and upload it to Instagram because you thought it was funny. Likewise, if all you do is post the same thing to every social network, people will get bored and think you have no idea how social media works. What's right for Instagram isn't always going to get the same kind of love on Tumblr. If everything is important enough to end up on your main blog, you're not doing any sort of editing, you're just regurgitating everything you produce, which makes your content look redundant.
6. Use cliché terminology
When you're at a press preview, or get a look at an upcoming collection, the last thing you want to do is ruin cool pics with dumb, tired captions. Injecting your own flavor to a piece you like and outlining a detail that stands out to you is a great place to start. Saying something like "I dig the navy suede on this bomber jacket" is more succinct than "the bomber jacket, a classic outerwear icon in the rugged world of menswear, looks trés luxe in this rich suede interpretation from the undoubtedly genius mind of this designer."
5. Laud everything you get for free
Free stuff is awesome. It's one of the perks of writing about clothing, sometimes you get things sent to you for review or as something to keep in mind for future stories. That doesn't mean you're obligated to Instagram it, tweet how awesome it is, or anything like that. An item or brand could totally suck, and that's perfectly fine. As a courtesy, just thank the people that sent it to you, evaluate if it's something you actually like, and move on with your life.
4. Publicly answering dumb Tumblr questions
Tumblr is great in the fact that it allows you to engage your followers by answering their questions. Guys could be looking for recommendations on a good tailor, want to know how the shoulders of a sportcoat should fit, and how to translate European sizes to American ones. That's all well and good to put out in public because it provides a service to the other people that follow you. When it gets abused is publishing questions like "Are you single?" or "I love your blog," and a snarky answer. Come on dudes, that's just tacky. Even if you're actually using social media to mack, by all means do your thing. Just keep it private.
3. Hating your fame
You've done it! You're a semi-popular menswear blogger that people love, hate, and love to hate. You get to work with dope brands and make money at J.C. Penney appearances with Nick Wooster. People compliment you all the time about how good your blog is... and you absolutely hate it. In fact, you hate it so much, you vent about how hard it is to be so successful and popular that it stresses you out—all the traveling, the complimentary dinners, the thirst-DMs from wannabe models just isn't worth it. Boo-hoo dude. So Internet fame is not all it's cracked up to be. No one feels sorry for you bro, you get paid to blog about clothes.
2. Hashtag overload
#It's #fucking #annoying #to #read #through #this #bullshit. Hashtags themselves have become a joke, and only really useful when following an event being live-tweeted, rather than learning more about a particular topic. Don't add the "#menswear #shoes #tattoos" crap to your Instagram captions and tweets. They're like the online equivalent of Ed Hardy T-shirts—a clear signal that this person is not to be taken seriously.
1. Tease content
Do not tweet "big things popping" or "working on some real cool stuff for next month." We don't care until it actually happens. Dope things that come out of nowhere are a lot better than building the hype and underwhelming everyone. Focus on creating good stuff and dropping it on a regular basis. The work will speak for itself. You don't need to Flava Flav yourself.
